The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for recording and/or reproducing digital signals, in particular to a method and an apparatus for recording digital signals in a recording medium by heads mounted on a rotary cylinder.
A conventional digital signal recording and reproduction apparatus is well known for recording and/or reproducing a high-definition television signal. An example of such an apparatus is disclosed in "HDTV Digital VTR", by Laurence Thorpe et al , SMPT Journal, October, 1989, pp. 738 to 747. This apparatus comprises eight recording heads and eight reproduction heads used for recording and reproducing digitized high-definition television signals of 1.2 Gb/s on a magnetic tape having a width of one inch. The drive system of the recording tape is reconstructed from a helical scanning type of VTR called the "C format" and has a recording tape winding angle of 345 degree proximate to 360 degree. As a result, a television signal is capable of being recorded except for the portions equivalent to the vertical blanking period.
As seen from this example, the recording and reproduction heads are required to be set to an optimized head parameter and cannot be used for recording and reproduction at the same time for a recording wavelength of 1.0 .mu.m or less. In the digital VTR of high-definition television signal requiring multichannel recording, therefore, a number of recording and reproduction heads are required on a rotary cylinder, thereby posing a significant problem for system configuration. This problem has been addressed only by increasing the cylinder diameter.